


it's only murder if no-one can see you

by GuiltyAdonis



Series: Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: ANIMAL VIOLENCE CW, Adept!Shepard, Colonist!Shepard, Ellen Shepard, F/M, Mindoir, it's only mentioned in passing but i do NOT like it so i figured it should be the first tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 02:29:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1802068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuiltyAdonis/pseuds/GuiltyAdonis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard remembers Mindoir.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's only murder if no-one can see you

**Author's Note:**

> **_Timeline:_** ME2, Garrus's loyalty mission.
> 
> My Elle is pretty far on the Paragon side of "Paragade", but every time I play the game, she lets Garrus kill Sidonis. In reality, it's because I can't stand the sight of him so anguished and full of hate that convincing him to be merciful isn't worth it. That's not how Ellen's mind works, though, so I started musing as to what her reasoning might be, and this is what I came up with.
> 
> The "Graphic Depictions of Violence" tag is a bit misleading, and I apologize. I abhor violence against any animal, especially canids, but I always knew Elle was a dog person, and, well, this happened. So I figured a harsher warning was better than a distressing surprise.

Sometimes Shepard has trouble remembering that, while it's only been weeks for her, over two years have passed for everyone else. The feeling doesn't last very long; all she has to do is look at Garrus.

She remembers talking to him the day he returned to the Citadel, two weeks— two years, three months, seventeen days— two weeks, _it was only two weeks_ ago. She remembers him eager and laughing and so, so _young_ ; she remembers his dry tawny voice, before it grew heavy with rage and regret. 

She'd always liked Garrus, right from the start. A little overeager to play fast and loose with the rules, maybe; but then perhaps she'd been a little overeager to follow them, at first. Garrus had been the easiest of her crew to get along with; even friendly, bubbly Tali seemed more disparate, more _alien_ in her reactions to the world around her.

And now, two years or two weeks later, her crew member— her teammate— her _friend_ has been beaten and broken by, it seems, life itself; and Shepard hadn't realized how badly this mattered to her until she'd had to watch him choking on the copper-blue blood spilling out across the dirty floor.

When he tells her about Sidonis, she hesitates only for a fraction of a second before agreeing to set a course for the Citadel as soon as she can. Watching him as they wend their way through the great station's factory district _hurts._ Even Dr. Saleon, he'd pursued out of a sense of duty, of justice for the people the mad doctor had killed; there was anger there, and disgust, but not this raw, vicious _hatred_. It jars her in a way she cannot express. When she meets Sidonis, weary and paranoid and hunched inside himself, a bare shell of regret, she almost stops Garrus there.

But Shepard remembers. She remembers the batarian with the thick jagged scar and the blind white eye, all slumped and tired the way this turian is. He probably had a family on Khar'shan, children and a wife that he had no other way to feed; he probably had a million reasons for becoming a pirate. But none of that matters, because she remembers, more clearly, the smell of her home as it burned; she remembers brave sweet Jake, who'd wagged his tail every day when she came home from school, who'd always jumped on her and knocked her over, and who'd killed two of the slavers come to get her before the third put a bullet to him. And most of all, she remembers the way it had felt, nine years later, to see that last scarred batarian again on Elysium; how it had felt to fling him upwards and tear him apart with just a flick of her fingers. He hadn't even remembered her, but she'd remembered Mindoir, and she'd remembered _him_.

Shepard thinks about what she would have done, then, if someone had stepped in and said, "but can't you see how _bad_ he feels about it?" She thinks about being trapped in an alley with her poor brave dog as, two blocks away, her family died trying to find her; she wonders whether she'd be able to live with herself if she'd been gone when the slavers hit, if she hadn't fought tooth and nail then and there to try and right that shattering wrong. She thinks about all of this, and about what she would do were she in Garrus's place, and realizes her decision has been made all along.

Shepard meets Sidonis's eyes, and steps aside.


End file.
